Half a century after opening its doors as Detroit’s first Black-owned full-service optical dispensary, Heritage Optical is still very much a family business - and its founder intends to keep it that way.
George P. Barnes Jr. started Heritage Optical in 1975 with a name chosen deliberately. Not Barnes Optical. Not something clinical or corporate. Heritage. The word, he has said, represents everything - his legacy, his children’s legacy, and his hope that the business will one day pass to his grandchildren as well.
That vision has proven durable. What began as a single storefront on the streets of Detroit has expanded into Heritage Vision Plans, a national network now serving more than 32,000 eye care providers across the United States - all while remaining firmly in family hands.
Lenny Barnes, Vice President of Business Development, was 11 years old when his father opened the first location. He didn’t fully grasp what was happening at the time, but decades later, he calls working alongside family a blessing. Today, he is helping steer the company’s next phase of growth.
For Lenny, that means rethinking one of the most fraught conversations in any family business: succession. Rather than treating it as an exit strategy, the Barnes family views it as a continuation - honoring what George P. Barnes Jr. set in motion 50 years ago with the intention of making it last.
Tracey Barnes, COO, shares that sense of duty. The longer she has been part of the business, the more she has come to appreciate the scale of what her father built - and the more committed she is to carrying it forward alongside her siblings. Growing the business and expanding its reach, she says, is not just a professional goal. It’s a family obligation.
Anchoring that long-term growth has been a banking relationship as old as the company itself. Heritage Optical has banked with Chase - originally NBD Bank before its merger into JPMorgan Chase - since 1975. For Tracey, that continuity means something. Any business that has survived decades has weathered different seasons and different storms, and Chase, she says, has been there through all of them.
As National Small Business Week draws attention to independent enterprises across the country, Heritage Optical stands as a 50-year proof of concept: that a business built on community, family, and a clear sense of purpose can outlast any single generation.
For the Barnes family, the next chapter isn’t an exit. It’s an expansion.
For more information on Chase for Business, visit chase.com/nationaltreasures.